


Your Gateway To a Stress-Free Life

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Brittas Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stop apologising, Carole, for heaven's sake. Everybody knows it's Gordon's fault for playing that Christmas tape on a loop." Helen's getting pretty good at stress management; she's had enough experience.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Gateway To a Stress-Free Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kanna-Ophelia

 

 

Carole had a routine; she'd look at her hands first, twisting awkwardly together in her lap, then across at the orange Samaritans poster on the other side of the room, then up at the damp patch on the ceiling above the therapy couch, then back to the hands. After ten minutes of this, Helen was finding it quite hypnotic.

"I'm dreadfully sorry, Mrs Brittas," Carole said - poster again, and Helen wondered idly whether the Samaritans had seen a drop in calls after news had gone around of Gordon's disastrous morning as a volunteer. 

"Stop apologising, Carole, for heaven's sake," she told her. "Everybody knows it's Gordon's fault for playing that Christmas tape on a loop."

"Sometimes I'd find myself quite enjoying it," Carole said dreamily, her focus drifting to the brown splotch on the ceiling. "It would go quiet at the end of the side, just for a couple of seconds while the tape turned over, and I'd find myself humming the first few bars, ready for it to start again." Something dark and a little bit frightening came into her eyes. "I knew then that it had to die, Mrs Brittas."

"It was the Hammond organ Christmas tape, wasn't it? Gordon used to play that one at home before we were burgled."

"Oh, Mrs Brittas, I didn't know..."

"It's all right," Helen said. "It was a funny thing, but they didn't take anything except the tapes. Turned up in a bag at the bottom of the canal six months later. Completely ruined, of course." The thought of those tapes squashed and unspooling underwater still made her smile.

"I don't know what came over me. It was as if a red mist descended, and there was Ben's cricket bat, and there was the tannoy..."

"That's what I'm here for," Helen said around a chocolate toffee. "Anger and stress management techniques. Have a Quality Street." She passed Carole the tin. "I've got loads of them. Roses, Black Magic, Turkish delight - all Christmas presents from my clients. I hope I wasn't supposed to get them anything."

"I'm sure the peace of mind you've given them is more than enough, Mrs Brittas." Carole poked through the sweets until she found a raspberry cream. "I think it's wonderful that you can just look a person over and see at once what's the matter with them. It must be such rewarding work."

"Well, it is," she said, flattered at the interest. People didn't usually ask about her counselling, even now that she'd been at the centre for more than a year. She was just there, like the wobbly bench in the women's changing rooms or the strange smell that followed Colin around. "Most of the time, you know, people just want somebody to talk to. They've got a gambling problem or they don't understand their kids or they want to complain about their marriage without the other person saying `Well, just leave him, then' because it's not that easy, especially when there are children."

Carole's eyes, she noticed, were very large, especially when she was looking sympathetic. "How awful," Carole said. "When you hear other people's problems it reminds you that you've really been quite lucky. At least I have a job, a roof over my head, a cupboard for the children - although Ben's not at all pleased that he has to share with the twins. He's used to having all that space for himself."

She wanted to ask after the twins - they were her stepchildren, after all, sort of - but she was worried that would reveal that she wasn't sure of their names, or even their genders, so she stuck to the nicely non-specific parent's conversational gambit: "They grow up so fast, don't they?"

"Oh, yes," Carole said, misty-eyed. "It seems like only yesterday that Ben was tucked up in his drawer."

"Seems like no time at all since my three were born," Helen said, then quickly recounted: "since my four were born. Or since I married Gordon. You know, Carole, sometimes I think this can't really be my life. It's all just been a dream and I'll wake up in my mum and dad's house, Marc Bolan staring down at me from the bedroom wall and my O-Level geography exam in the morning."

Carole shuddered. "Sixteen again."

"I know. Acne."

"Monday morning PE."

"School, full stop."

"Your parents forcing you to give up your piano lessons because it's time you should be thinking about finding a husband."

"Y-es..." Helen passed over the sweets again, if only to get her to unclench her fists. "When you feel stressed," she said, proud that she hadn't even had to look in her textbook for this, "try counting to ten while you breathe in and out, and imagine yourself somewhere lovely and calm. Try it now, go on. I'll do it with you."

"I'll try, Mrs Brittas."

Helen did this with a lot of her clients, and she slipped easily into her own calm place - a desert island, palm fronds wafting in the sea breeze and a big sign on the beach saying _Whitbury, 10,000 miles; Pharmacy, 3 feet_. She was adding in a cocktail bar when Carole's voice penetrated. For a few seconds that confused her; her beach suddenly had Carole on it, rising majestically out of the sea, arms outstretched towards her.

She opened her eyes, blinking.

"Are you quite all right, Mrs Brittas?" Carole asked.

"That seaweed didn't leave much to the imagination," she said, and shook her head to clear it. "Well, did that... help? At all?"

"It was wonderful," Carole sighed. 

"Where did you imagine yourself? On a beach? In the rainforest? One of my clients likes to pretend he's sitting on the Sydenham bypass, but he's a bit peculiar, to be honest."

"Oh, I didn't go anywhere, Mrs Brittas," she said. "I just stayed here, where it's quiet and there isn't any dreadful Christmas music, and you're here to listen and be so kind."

It said something for her life, Helen thought, that that might be the single nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

"Listen," she said, "I'm going to tell Gordon you need regular counselling. I'll put you in the book once a week. We can do the relaxation techniques, or just have tea and a chat, if you want, or talk about the children. It'll be nice."

Carole's eyes went impossibly wide. "But he'll think I'm not cured, Mrs Brittas!"

"Call me Helen, please. And never mind about Gordon. You're the mother of two of his children, I think giving you an hour off a week's the least he can do. Anyway, you're hardly going to smash the speaker system again, are you?"

"I've promised Mr Brittas I'll never do it again, Mrs Brittas... Helen," Carole said timidly. "It's just that Colin's fixing the tannoy now, and if that... noise... starts again, I don't know what I'll do."

"I thought of that." Helen reached beneath her chair for the bag she'd got from the music shop that morning. "This is every Hammond organ tape I could find in Whitbury."

"Please," Carole begged, "don't make me listen to them. I won't be responsible for my actions."

"We're not going to listen to them," she said. "That wouldn't be therapeutic at all. Honestly, Carole, I am trained in this sort of thing, you know. Now, Colin's let me borrow a mallet and a blowtorch; which one do you want to try first?" 

 


End file.
